Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
Albert Ballin
Summary
Albert Ballin (15 August 1857 – 9 November 1918) was a German shipping magnate. He was the general director of the Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG) or Hamburg-America Line, which for a time was the world's largest shipping company. Being the inventor of the concept of the cruise ship, he is known as the father of modern cruise ship travel. Albert Ballin was a risk-taker who was willing to challenge his colleagues, foreign competitors, and domestic politics in order to build a successful shipping company. He focused on British rivals and was determined to expand HAPAG's global reach. A Jew, he nevertheless worked closely with the Kaiser and supported expansion of the German navy.
The SS Augusta Victoria, named after the German Empress Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, was the first modern cruise ship in the world. She set sail on 10 May 1889, from Hamburg to New York City via Southampton. Two years later, she went on the world's first Mediterranean cruise.
In 1901, Ballin built the Emigration Halls on the Hamburg island of Veddel to accommodate the many thousands of people from all over Europe who arrived at the Port of Hamburg every week to emigrate to North and South America on his company's ships. The island is now the BallinStadt Museum. In 1913, HAPAG owned three of the world's biggest ocean liners; however all were later seized as part of World War I reparations.
Facing the loss of his company's ships after the world war, Ballin committed suicide in Hamburg as the war ended.
His father, Samuel Joseph Ballin (1804–1874), was a Danish Jew who had emigrated from Denmark. Samuel was part owner of an emigration agency that arranged passages to the United States, and when he died in 1874, young Albert took over the business. He developed it into an independent shipping line, saving costs by carrying cargo on the return trip from the US. This brought him to the attention of the Hamburg America Line; the line hired him in 1886 and made him general director in 1899.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.